Wake The Fuck Up!

Something was calling me to India. I had to see the lowest, those who had nothing but the clothing on their backs and flip-flops held together with prayers. But here's the thing that fucked with my head—I've been embraced by people who literally owned nothing besides what they were wearing, and I've never felt more seen in my life.Toto, we ain't in NYC anymore. Where I come from, people with designer everything can look right through you like you're invisible. Here, some guy with three teeth and a smile that could power Mumbai would grab my hands and look into my eyes like he was seeing my actual soul. Hello, Dorothy—turns out the yellow brick road leads through slums where kindness costs nothing and feels like everything.India had to show me abject poverty of the lowest cast members and the ritual of death.It was 103 degrees in Varanasi, the air so thick you could chew it and still be hungry.I'd been there three weeks, wandering through alleys that smelled like incense and piss, trying to understand why I kept gravitating toward places where death was on full display. This was one of many holy places I'd visit in my life—later, Istanbul would become crucial to my story—but Varanasi was where the universe first showed me death as theater, as art, as something sacred instead of shameful.This was 2023. I was still years away from understanding what those impossible voices on a cassette tape would teach me about love reaching across time. But something was already stirring in Varanasi, some awareness I couldn't name yet.My tuk-tuk driver was this character called Papa Jii who was assigned to me for the week I was there. I'm pretty sure he was drunk most of the time, but somehow could weave through billions of people like he had GPS installed in his liver. This wasn't your typical tourist guideexperience—Papa Jii had appointed himself my spiritual advisor, which mainly involved himchain-smoking and dispensing wisdom between near-death traffic encounters.One morning he gets this serious look and hands me a bag of bananas. Not like "hey, try somefruit." This was a full intervention. "FOR YOUR KARMA," he said, stressing each word likehe was delivering a court verdict. "You carry. You give to anyone, any animal in need. FORYOUR KARMA."The way he said it—not casual, not some throwaway namaste-and-go-have-kombuchabullshit. This felt like spiritual homework with consequences. Like if I didn't carry thosebananas, my soul might get a failing grade.The scale of death here was Game of Thrones level, but ritualized, sanctified. People lined theGanges in hospice houses that looked like ancient apartments, waiting to die so they could bepurified by the holy river. Not hiding from death, not fighting it—just waiting for it like you'dwait for a bus you knew was coming.I walked the ghats near the crematoriums, literally kicking wooden coffins on the stone stepsbecause there were so many you couldn't avoid them. The smell hit you first—raw, metallic,undeniably human. Bodies wrapped in white silk and marigolds, lined up like a sacredconveyor belt feeding the giant funeral pyres that burned 24/7. The smoke mixed with incensein the wind. Flesh and prayers rising together.This was industrial-scale death, but treated as holy communion. Families camping out fordays, tending fires, singing prayers, celebrating the release of souls. Old people, frail as ricepaper, sat in those riverside houses with the kind of patience that comes from accepting what'sinevitable. Death here wasn't tragedy—it was graduation.Every night, the Aarti ceremonies drew thousands to the riverbank—150,000 people on busynights, 60,000 on a slow Tuesday, but who's counting when you're witnessing something thismassive? Hindu priests in orange robes performing ancient rituals with fire and bells andchanting that seemed to rise from the earth itself. I got blessed by one of them—holy waterflicked on my fore